Category: Color
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button state tokens: the three states nobody designs
A button has five real states, not two. Default and hover get designed; active, disabled, and loading get left to accident. Here’s how to name and token all five.
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dark mode tokens: why inverting your palette doesn’t work
Flip every hex value for dark mode and the depth disappears — a card that read as “elevated” in light mode goes flat, because that depth was never really in the color. The instinct to treat dark mode as an inversion makes sense on the surface: light backgrounds become dark, dark text becomes light, done.…
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wcag and design systems: why accessibility belongs in the token layer
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in Accessibility, Color, css, Figma, Fonts, Iconography, Sites, Styleguides, Tokens, UI KIt, UI/UX, Web DesignWCAG compliance isn’t a checklist you run at the end — it’s a constraint you build into the system at the token level. A lot of designers treat accessibility as a QA pass: ship the design, then check the contrast ratios. That approach fails at scale because it moves the problem downstream where it’s expensive…
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color systems
A palette comprises a collection of colors, while a color system establishes rules for color usage across three tiers: primitives (raw values), semantics (assigned meanings), and components (which utilize these meanings). This structure allows for streamlined updates across surfaces, enabling automatic adjustments for themes and branding changes.
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i built a design system business in 6 weeks using only claude code
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in AI, Automation, Color, Components, Educational, Illustrations, Images, Sites, Styleguides, Tokens, Typography, UI/UX, Web DesignSix weeks from first commit to a deployed product site, a content pipeline, a Gumroad membership, and a MailerLite funnel — one designer, one tool, no team. On April 25, 2026 I ran git init in a Google Drive folder. On June 5 I had a functioning design system business: a static site deployed to…
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BRAND: Electronic Arts
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in Color, Fonts, Iconography, Illustrations, Images, Sites, Styleguides, Typography, UI KIt, UI/UX, Unique DesignsElectronic Arts 2025 BRAND REFRESH by Instrument DESIGN STUDIO Check out this article by Brand Archive that details the elements of the 2025 brand refresh from Electronic Arts and their partnership with Instrument design studio. https://brandarchive.xyz/identity/electronic-arts
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Huemint
AI-powered color palette generator that uses machine learning to create harmonious and contextually relevant color schemes for graphic design, branding, and websites. Unlike traditional color tools that produce a flat palette, Huemint’s key innovation is generating colors based on how they will be used in the final design, such as considering which colors are for…
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Zeplin
a collaboration and design delivery platform that helps streamline the handoff process between designers and developers.